Critical-historical edition of La Abadesa de las Huelgas

The Instituto Histórico SanJosemaría Escrivá has published a critical-historical edition of LaAbadesa de las Huelgas (Madrid, Rialp, 2016, 867 pages). This work was first published by the founder of Opus Dei in 1944. The research was carried out by María Blanco, professor of Ecclesiastical State Law at the University of Navarra, and María del Mar Martín, professor of the same subject at the University of Almería. This is the fifth volume in the collection “Obras Completas de san Josemariía Escrivá de Balaguer” (The Complete Works of St. Josemaría Escrivá).

The LaAbadesa de las Huelgas contains the results of St. Josemaría’s research on the unusual canonical jurisdiction exercised, until 1874, by the abbess of the Royal Monastery of Las Huelgas, in Burgos, Spain, and its canonical legitimacy. Among other powers and faculties granted to the abbess, the specific focus of the book is her quasi-episcopal or nullius dioecesis power.

“With the perspective provided by the passage of time,” Bishop Javier Echevarría writes in the prologue, “the study that Escrivá carried out at the end of the ’30’s and beginning of the’40’s of the last century, reveals some of his characteristic concerns as a university man and as a priest. What stands out is his love for the Church’s law, his historical mentality, his appreciation for university research, and his interest in everything that concerns the Church, including the cloistered religious.”